Posted
by
timothyon Friday February 25, 2011 @06:10AM
from the gnu-way-to-look-at-things dept.

Josh Triplett writes "Intel announced the release of a BIOS Implementation Test Suite (BITS), a bootable pre-OS environment based on GNU GRUB2 that tests how well (or how badly) your BIOS has configured your platform hardware. BITS also includes Intel's official power management reference code, so you can override your BIOS's initialization with a known-good configuration. 'In addition to those changes to GRUB2 itself, BITS includes configuration files which build a menu exposing the various BITS functionality, including the test suites, hardware configuration, and exploratory tools. These scripts detect your system's CPU, and provide menu entries for all the available functionality on your hardware platform. You can also access all of the new commands we've added directly via the command line.'"

a bootable pre-OS environment based on GNU GRUB2 that tests how well (or how badly) your BIOS has configured your platform hardware.

!!INTEL BIOS WARNING!!

We have just detect that you've configured your CPU in egg frying mode. Reverting to pansy mode. If you want a fast processor in pansy mode, please contact your nearest Intel dealer and open your wallet.

Because some of us old-timers still run DOS (be it MS-DOS or FreeDOS) that relies solely on the BIOS for interfacing with the hardware so we can that ancient software that runs $$$$ worth of industrial equipment. Now get off my lawn.